© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
Oxford University Press [OUP] has released The Chronicle of Jazz just in time for the holiday gift-giving season.
The following annotation is from OUP’s media release about the work.
“The book was authored by Dr. Mervyn Cooke who is Professor of Music at the University of Nottingham and has published extensively on the history of jazz, film music, and the music of Benjamin Britten. His most recent books include The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, The Hollywood Film Music Reader, The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Opera and Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten.
The Chronicle of Jazz charts the evolution of jazz from its roots in Africa and the southern United States to the myriad urban styles heard around the world today. Mervyn Cooke gives us a narrative rich with innovation, experimentation, controversy, and emotion. The book is completely up to date, exploring the exciting recent developments in the world of jazz, from the rise of modern Big Bands and the renaissance of the piano trio to the popular appeal of Jamie Cullum and HBO's Treme.
Featuring hundreds of rare images, from record-cover artwork to pictures of live performances, each chronologically arranged section contains special box features on such topics as the unique tonal qualities of the bass clarinet, jazz clubs in Paris, personality sketches, and seminal gigs and albums. A substantial reference section features information on international jazz festivals, a glossary of musical terms, biographies of musicians, and extensive discography, and further reading. A celebration of the most imaginative and enduring music of the last 120 years, The Chronicle of Jazz would serve as an enjoyable reference for all music lovers.”
Here’s a link to OUP should you wish to order directly from them - OUP.
To give you a sampling of the year-by-year approach of the book’s format, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles, with the assistance of the ace graphics team at CerraJazz LTD and the production facilities of StudioCerra has created this video montage of some of the book’s slides and set it to Lennie Tristano performing his original composition East Thirty-Second with Peter Ind on bass and Jeff Morton on drums.
